Improving older patients’ safety in Western Australian hospitals – reducing falls in rehabilitation units.

All patients continue to receive their usual care. In addition to usual care, eligible patients admitted to the intervention wards will receive a multimedia falls prevention education package (DVD and workbook) with further face to face follow up education (including workbook completion and goal setting) with a health professional. The DVD will be shown to the patient at the bedside. Education session lengths will range between 15 and 35 minutes. The total number of sessions to deliver the entire educational content of the program is intended to occur within 4 sessions (range 1 to 4 sessions depending on the individual). The health professional delivering the intervention will have discretion over the frequency and duration of each follow up education session depending on individual patient and circumstance. However, the educational content is the same for all patients receiving the intervention. This flexibility in the frequency and duration of delivery is reflective of differences between and within individual patients' conditions such that on one day they may not feel well enough to participate in an education session, or only be able to manage a short duration of discussion, but on other days may tolerate longer sessions. Staff receive ongoing information about which patients have received the education and what the outcomes are for that individual patient, as well as any ward implications identified for that patient. There is not a maximum duration for the intervetion although it is expected that patients would receive a maximum of 5 sessions. All wards commence in the control conditions at time 0. Two wards crossover into the intervention after 10 weeks and so on until all wards by 41 weeks have entered the intervention arm of the trial.